The ticket is yours, but if it were mine I should, first of all, of course, spend twenty-five thousand on real property in the shape of an estate; ten thousand on immediate expenses, new furnishing... travelling... paying debts, and so on....
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

As an observer of human nature, I regularly frequent St. George's, Hanover Square, during the genteel marriage season; and though I have never seen the bridegroom's male friends give way to tears, or the beadles and officiating clergy any way affected, yet it is not at all uncommon to see women who are not in the least concerned in the operations going on—old ladies who are long past marrying, stout middle-aged females with plenty of sons and daughters, let alone pretty young creatures in pink bonnets, who are on their promotion, and may naturally take an interest in the ceremony—I say it is quite common to see the women present piping, sobbing, sniffling; hiding their little faces in their little useless pocket-handkerchiefs; and heaving, old and young, with emotion.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

On page 58, near the close of his illustration of the chair, Mr. Spencer says: "It suffices to remark that since the force as known to us is an affection of consciousness, we cannot [148] conceive the force as existing in the chair under the same form without endowing the chair with consciousness."
— from Know the Truth: A Critique on the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation Including Some Strictures Upon the Theories of Rev. Henry L. Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer by Jesse Henry Jones

He suddenly felt, felt by a kind of intuition, that this grand creature was not merely a being destined to perpetuate the race, but the strange and mysterious product of all our complicated desires which have been accumulating in us for centuries but which have been turned aside from their primitive and divine object and have wandered after a mystic, imperfectly perceived and intangible beauty.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

It not only dictates, but of itself tends to produce a more frequent employment of picturesque and vivifying language, than would be natural in any other case, in which there did not exist, as there does in the present, a previous and well understood, though tacit, compact between the poet and his reader, that the latter is entitled to expect, and the former bound to supply this species and degree of pleasurable excitement.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

If there is, as doubtless there is, an unnameable something behind oratory, a fund within or atmosphere without, deeper than art, deeper even than proof, that unnameable constitutional something Elias Hicks emanated from his very heart to the hearts of his audience, or carried with him, or probed into, and shook and arous'd in them—a sympathetic germ, probably rapport, lurking in every human eligibility, which no book, no rule, no statement has given or can give inherent knowledge, intuition—not even the best speech, or best put forth, but launch'd out only by powerful human magnetism: Unheard by sharpest ear—unformed in clearest eye, or cunningest mind, Nor lore, nor fame, nor happiness, nor wealth, And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world, incessantly, Which you and I, and all, pursuing ever, ever miss; Open, but still a secret—the real of the real—an illusion; Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner; Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme——historians in prose; Which sculptor never chisel'd yet, nor painter painted; Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter' d. That remorse, too, for a mere worldly life—that aspiration towards the ideal, which, however overlaid, lies folded latent, hidden, in perhaps every character.
— from Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy by Walt Whitman

Dose, 1–16 drops in a little water or wine before each meal, for dyspepsia, anæmia, convalescence from fevers, and other conditions in which a tonic is indicated.
— from The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines by T. H. (Trinidad Hermenegildo) Pardo de Tavera

[ All uncivilized nations agree in this property, which becomes less necessary as a nation improves in the arts of civil life.
— from The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus by Cornelius Tacitus

"Yes, let him alone, of course!
— from Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

—Urine consists of a variety of earthy and alkaline salts, and of certain organic substances, generally rich in nitrogen, dissolved in a large quantity of water.
— from Elements of Agricultural Chemistry by Thomas Anderson

"Mr. Prescott, what do you mean by perpetrating a poor-spirited joke under the guise of making an official communication?"
— from Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point; Or, Two Chums in the Cadet Gray by H. Irving (Harrie Irving) Hancock

No Knight of the Age of Chivalry could treat her with more deference.
— from The Foolish Virgin by Dixon, Thomas, Jr.

Of course other parts of the machinery are of corresponding dimensions.
— from Discoveries and Inventions of the Nineteenth Century by Robert Routledge

Please have the proper entries made, The proper balances displayed, Conforming to the whole amount Of cash on hand—which they will count.
— from The Cynic's Word Book by Ambrose Bierce

It seems there were anciently occasional cannibal tribes [207] in those regions, but not a [p333] vestige of cannibalism, as I believe, now remains; except such an inhuman appetite may be ascribed to some of the more savage warriors, who, as I have heard, in the delirium of exultant victory, have been known to devour the hearts of their bravest victims, at once to satiate their blood-thirsty propensities, and to appropriate to themselves, as they fancy, the valor of the slain enemy.
— from Gregg's Commerce of the Prairies, 1831-1839, part 2 by Josiah Gregg

Not so Lamarck; although born 25 years earlier, his theories were half a century in advance of Cuvier’s, and he paid the penalty that has so often overtaken those pioneers whose vision anticipated the future.
— from Evolution Social and Organic by Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis

The attention of Congress is invited to the report of the Secretary of the Interior and to the legislation asked for by him.
— from State of the Union Addresses (1790-2006) by United States. Presidents

Their number differed greatly at different times; their names are mostly fantastically derived from the occupation or residence of the parties concerned; there was an emperor of the Prato of Ognisanti, a king of the wool-carders of Orsanmichele, and various others with similar titles derived from localities in Camaldoli; monarchs of Sant’Ambrogio and Terrarossa, dukes of the Via Guelfa, of the Arno, of Camporeggi, of the moon, the dove, the owl; princes of the apple and of the standard-carriage, grand signors of the Pitti and of the dyers, lords of the chain, the swallow, the kitchen-range, the sword, the scourge, the elm, and suchlike names.
— from Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent (vol. 2 of 2) by Alfred von Reumont